The Fremantle Prison Collection

Chubb brand padlock, c1870s

The Fremantle Prison Collection is a diverse collection, comprised of approximately 15,000 items, including photographs, documents, furnishings, artworks, tools, clothing and textiles, institutional paraphernalia, letters, weapons and archaeological material. The collection also incorporates fixed artworks on walls, including graffiti, murals in yards and on cell walls, and in both chapels.

The collection spans the entirety of the Prison’s operational life, from the convict years through to the early 1990s when the Prison closed. The collection’s association with Fremantle Prison and Western Australia’s penal history ascribes it with state-wide significance; individual items within the collection, among them the convict clothing, are of national significance, due to their rarity.

The collection reflects the changing approaches to incarceration and penal reform, as well as the impacts this had on convicts, prisoners from different backgrounds including Aboriginal people, and staff. Through its size and breadth, the Fremantle Prison Collection provides a rare and valuable insight into the reality of incarceration over a period of 140 years.